1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for printing an image on a medium such as a print sheet, and, more particularly to an image forming apparatus that has a recording head of an ink jet system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an image forming apparatus of this type, for example, as disclosed in JP-A-2005-125675, there is known an image forming apparatus that has a sheet conveying path for conveying a sheet in an apparatus body thereof and ejects an ink from a recording head to the sheet conveyed by this sheet conveying path to form an image.
Usually, a sheet guide (a media guide) is spaced apart from and opposed to the recording head and the ink is ejected to a sheet guided along this sheet guide.
At the time of a printing operation, ink mist is generated around the recording head and, in particular, the sheet guide is stained by this ink mist. When the sheet guide is stained by the ink mist, it is likely that, when following sheets are guided, the sheets are stained.
Thus, conventionally, the sheet guide is cleaned periodically.
However, conventionally, since the sheet guide is fixedly provided in the apparatus body, in cleaning the sheet guide, it is necessary to insert a cleaning tool into the apparatus body and perform work in a small space. Therefore, there is a problem in that workability is low and it is difficult to check a cleaning effect.
As other means for cleaning the sheet guide, paper (e.g., white paper) for cleaning is passed through the sheet guide to clean the stain of the sheet guide with this paper.
However, in this case, there is a problem in that this is uneconomical because paper is used wastefully.